The way I see gamification is a tool that we teachers can use as a way to assess students level of understanding through a game. This is similar to playing Kahoot or a class favorite game I play with my students when reviewing for a test called Grudge Ball. On the other hand game-based learning is a way students get more involved in exploring and learning the content through a game. I say exploring because it’s similar to playing video games. To be successful in a video game you have to complete objectives. Also, students go through simulations as they try to “master” certain skills or levels before they can move on to the next level. This is something that was talked about throughout the book Matt and I read in the 792 class on James P. Gee’s book, Good Video Games and Good Learning. Desmos.com or Khan Academy are examples of game based learning. Desmos has more of a game feel to it as students work on math problems and it begins with simple math problems and these math problems get more difficult as they go through the task. Kahn Academy does this as well but it doesn’t have the “gaming” feel to it. A way that I might try game-based learning is to try more technological or online games that work around Math. For example code.org seemed like a really cool website that has students use coding to run computer simulations while learning mathematical concepts. I also saw a case study of this website on Edutopia last year and it seemed really cool on how the teacher had students explore the idea of a slope of a line and how they can manipulate the code top modify the slope of the line from which was being observed from a rocket ship being launched. Another gamification tool that I explored this week and I saw how it can really benefit my classroom is Socrative.com. I noticed they have a bunch of features but I really liked the quiz features, the exit ticket and also allows me to clearly see organized data results from student responses. To me that is really powerful. But after all of these amazing tools, it just seems overwhelming but exciting as I do plan to integrate a lot of what we have explored in this Innovative program for two semesters now. To me, the goal is clear of what I want to do but the challenge is to be able to organize and structure my classroom so students can easily follow along and feel like they are learning. It comes down to what Jane McGonigal said in her talk, “Gamers are super-empowered hopeful individuals. These are people who believe that they are individually capable of changing the world. And the only problem is, they believe that they are capable of changing virtual worlds and not the real world.” This really got my attention when watching the video because this covers, in what I believe, that we are all trying to have our students do with what we are trying to teach in the classroom. If we can do this, I think our students can change the world!
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The tools that I chose to explore this week were EdPuzzle, Vibby and Vocaroo. I chose these because first of all they were free. Lol I also wanted to check out another tool similar to EdPuzzle and Vibby was an option. It was user friendly just as EdPuzzle was. I noticed that it had videos that have already been created and one can also search for videos on a category of your choosing. You can also edit those video or find a video on YouTube you like and edit that one. I wasn’t able to create the video I wanted that I think would benefit my students so I went the safe route and used an old Power Point and used Screencastify. I also did this since I was busy trying to finish the rest of the assignments for this class and our other class. I also tried to apply visual strategies from Baggio because this Power Point is an old one so I really made it a lot more simple and arranging text in specific spots and so on. But, the way I applied the video I created for my flipped lesson was to have students take notes on the video and then do some hw problems after watching the video. Which this is a way that I plan to assess students on the video is if they not only did the hw problems that were in the video but also to check for understanding. I can definitely see myself using these tools in the future as it would save time in the classroom because the note taking can be done at home. But then come the issue of equity. Do all students have internet at home? If they don’t, what then, how do we support them? Or if they don’t watch it because they decided not to, what are the consequences? I also mentioned above that I explored Vocaroo. That is a very simple tool to use if you want to record audio. I tried it out but the audio is very “staticky”. So the quality is not that good. But then the other challenge is how this tool can be used or which tools can we insert audio clips from Vocaroo on?
The only time I have used Google Forms in the past was for collecting qualitative data during my action research study. Therefore, I created very simple surveys without using any add-ons that could have assisted me when analyzing the data. After seeing a little bit of the power that these forms have when used and created appropriately in the classroom, I will try my best to take advantage of it.
After looking at the provided resources in our Content section from the ICARE and talking about Google forms in our June 21 session I am really interested in being able to create peer evaluations using Google Forms. When I have done projects in both my Math and AVID class I have students fill out their peer evaluations on paper. Then I find myself scrambling to look through the papers and add up numbers manually. I hope that using Google Forms I can easily create these where not only it can help me but it can help my students be better evaluators. Maybe after getting better at this I can have students evaluate themselves when doing student presentations. In regards to my research/capstone project I still plan to use Google Forms when collecting data. Now that I have more experience I hope that I can create better and useful forms that will generate the best feedback and data I can possibly receive that will help me with my final work for this program. Here are the 3 Google Forms I created this week: Adding/Subtracting Integers 1st Week of NHS Summer Academy Combining Like Terms Assessment As I navigated through the #ISTE2018 hashtag it seemed a bit overhelming with all of the resources and diverse resources people were sharing. At the same time though it was really neat to see that people are willing to share what they are experiencing at the conference so others who couldn't attend can find out about it. Now it makes me want to go check it out in the future if I can. One of the many tweets that I explored a bit more was done by @tamorten and tweeted about the new Google Classroom updates that were revealed at #ISTE2018. And @tamorten also shared a link to a website by Richard Byrne where it gave small details about these new updates.
One thing that caught my eye was a post done by @jfalkenthal on noticing that there were international student presenters from Mexico at the ISTE conference. I thought it was really amazing to see not just students but international students at a booth promoting their workshops on educating about Mexican traditions through 2D and 3D animation. I began by looking for math chats on twitter, but then I came across #ellchat. I decided to follow the conversation since the subgroup of ELL’s were my focus during my study I thought this was appropriate to do. At first I noticed that there was announcement made for people to join the conversation at a specific hour and once that hour came I joined. It was interesting to see the interaction among educators. It was really cool to see how people were responding to each other but most importantly exchanging resources! That was really cool! I also noticed how the way the moderator was asking questions, the structure of them was similar to the twitter chat we had last week in class. Was it completely helpful for my capstone? I am not sure if it was. I think the engagement was great but the focus was on supporting ELL’s with summer reading. I think that this might another lesson learned for me to spend more time looking for twitter chats that will benefit me and my students.
Looking at the different resources that was provided this week in the ICARE, there is many benefits of using social media in the classroom in order to develop/collaborate/communicate as a professional. To me if the structure of how social media is used appropriately this can be successful. What does that look like? I think that if schools follow the “How to Create Social Media Guidelines for Your School” structure it can build and carry on a positive culture throughout the campus. There were 7 categories schools/districts should look at: 1) Examine your school culture, 2) organize a team, 3) research phase, 4) draft your document and incorporate feedback, 5) make sure the school attorney and school board see the draft, 6) introduction to the school community and 7) review periodically. As professionals it’s key to collaborate not just within the school but with other schools in the same district and the district itself in order to understand the norms that we are trying to build as we use social media to grow as professionals and support student learning. Something that caught my eye was the idea of changing the school policies periodically. Since technology and online tools are constantly evolving, the school “policy or guidelines should be a living document and should be revisited often.” Social media has so much power, positive and negative. We have to be aware of the two outcomes. What we want to get out of it depends on ow we structure the use of it on our classrooms. Because as Ariana Figueroa quoted in her article ,”the possibilities are endless.”
I haven’t seen inappropriate comments done by students since I don’t follow or add students to my personal social media accounts. I have though had students comment to me about inappropriate comments done by other students. What I did in that situation was to get in contact with one of the vice principals and let them know what I heard and saw. They eventually took care of the situation after that. I think that I did the right thing taking into consideration the level of “inappropriateness” in the tweet. If I see a comment like the one mentioned edtechteacher article and it happened to be my student, I would confront the student about it and then refer him/her to the office. But I think that it all depends on the level of offense. A tool that I use in my classroom is Desmos.com. This website has a couple of features that I tend to use a lot. The first feature that I use is the calculator that students can use. I begin by having students download the app (IOS or android) on their phones (it’s free) and then logging in using their school account. This allows them to graph linear equations, plot points, and create tables of values and save all their work as if it were a document. The other really cool feature I use from Desmos.com is the Activities Bundles.
When it comes to get students to work on these activities I choose an activity that has students review the current content that we are studying in our class. On the students ECHO agenda I provide them with a link that takes them directly to the page where all they have to do is click sign in and they are in the game. Depending on the activity they work alone through math problems or get to play against other students in the classroom in real time. Think of the childhood game Guess Who, well my students get to play a guessing game like that but with linear equations. Here is a link if you are interested in checking it out: Polygraph Lines. One of my colleagues is the one who introduced me to this website as this year we moved to 2-hour clock periods and I wanted to do something fun and interactive in the classroom. The setup is easy since it’s just a click away to get a class code that I then provide for the students with a link on ECHO like I mentioned above. I also get to see student responses in real time and assess what they know or don’t know. Some of the difficulties that I have come across is not having enough devices in the classroom and then have to send students to neighboring classes to borrow classroom Chromebooks. Also, in the beginning and still a bit today I struggle with properly grading these activities and providing feedback. Also I am not able to provide every student feedback since everyone is playing or going through the activities at the same time and every student thinks ad expresses their thinking in their own unique way. I don’t have a lesson plan to share, but the times I used a Desmos activity bundle it was usually on our 2 hour block periods. On those days I hold three 30-minute stations. One station is the Desmos activity, another station is my Collaborative Study groups (similar to an AVID tutorial session) and the third station is more of review/intervention. Students begin working in their station, 30 minutes hits and I announce for them to rotate to the next station. And they rotate until they have gone through all 3 stations. It’s a fact that we are all busy in our classes when it comes to teaching our content. But Digital Literacy is something that is essential to talk or teach in the classroom. Students are constantly on their phones and using applications to communicate with the world. But how safe are students? This is something that I have thought about before but never in the sense of teaching specific standards, ISTE, to my Math or AVID students. After discussing some of the standards in our class and exploring websites like KQED Mindshift, Common Sense Media and other sites, there’s a sense of relief of all the resources they provide on how to teach this content in our classroom. To me, this seems like a great way to begin a school year, hoping that this positive culture of media use can also expand to the positive and safe environment I want to build in my classroom among my students and myself.
This past school year, we began classes on a Wednesday and for those 3 first days of class I didn’t do any Math. I had a bunch of team bonding activities along with discussions that revolved around making mistakes in my math class. I wanted to begin with this since Math has the reputation that in order to be successful you have to get the correct answer to a Math problem. But in my opinion that is not the case, it’s more about the journey of getting an answer in Math, to be a Mathematician. This is where I think that lessons on digital literacy can play an important role. For example I can provide students with the web page on Cyber bullying on from Common Sense Media. Students can also work among friends, if they know people, and watch a video and then create some sort of poster on their findings and then share their ideas with another group. This is an example on how I can begin teaching digital literacy with other subjects like what students should or should not share on social media and many other topics. As students work on a Mathematical task and I roam around the classroom I usually can hear students talk about what they have seen on social media apps and what they think about what they’ve seen. Some of these conversations that students have, I have had to report to administration before because of the possible ramifications it could have on the students involved. Therefore, talking and exploring the concept behind digital citizenship has opened my eyes to a whole new world of teaching.
I will be honest, I love the idea of educating teenagers on digital citizenship but at the moment we are so busy trying to incorporate and teach all the standards the state has us required to do, it almost seems impossible to include one more thing into our curriculum without having to or being able to take something out. Can this be sprinkled into our curriculum, it might be possible. I am a high school teacher and in my Math classes I teach mostly freshmen and I think that at the high school level this is the most appropriate time to teach digital citizenship. One of the most important things I can incorporate in the classroom is what students share on social media and making sure that they know that what they upload on social media is permanent. This is something that was covered in the videos had to watch this week for homework. Another thing that can work well is the conversations we can have in the classroom. For example, I enjoyed the conversations that Elaine Giromini had with her middle schoolers. She began with an activity of having them stand up or sit down depending on their responses to the questions. I think that I can try something like this and then maybe applying s Socratic seminar type of conversation at the end to reflect on the class activity. A third example I can include is to have students research what digital citizenship is all about and look for real life examples of what being unsafe in the digital world can do to teenagers and the consequences it comes with. I really like the Creative Commons search tools they have. Not only do students search topics through a database type of website, they are searching topics through websites that are appealing to them. I think that this can really make it personal for my students. A place that this can really work though is in my AVID class. My AVID class will be juniors next year but I wish I had these tools when they were freshmen. I say this because of the dep discussions I’ve had with them with other topics. We have known each other for two years now so it’s easier to open up and make activities more personal. In a Math 1 class where there is a wider range of knowledge and mentality of academic goals it’s more of a challenge. But it is worth trying especially for opening up school year with these topics. As a teacher who does a lot of group work in my Math class, competency-based learning does sound interesting to apply. But I found myself asking myself questions about this method as I read the article. I kept thinking of my current Math 1 classes and the demographics of it. At the end of the article is says that to develop the right classroom culture and support for student agency takes time. Well how much time is that?
When it comes to competency-based learning and how educational technology can support it, I thought of having students look at the Math 1 standards and for each student to choose a standard to master. After choosing this we can group students who choose the same standard and then have them work through digitally collaborative activities until they master that standard. This can involve projects or websites that have them practice problems (Khan Academy, Desmos, etc.). But at the moment this seems like a challenge for a teacher. I say this because students are choosing what they want to master but in the article it says that we are not planning individual lessons for these students so it is still a bit confusing to me. I would like to see videos of classroom with this type of culture, it would be interesting to see how students are collaborating together and I would love to see the role the teacher has in that classroom. |